This study investigates the relations between tone, voicing, and voice quality in modern Shanghai Chinese. In low tone syllables, word-initial obstruent onsets are traditionally described as voiceless and breathy, and sonorant onsets as voiced and breathy.Our study is based on acoustic and electroglottographic (EGG) data from speakers of two age groups (20–30 vs. 60–80 years). Our results are globally in line with previous studies, but with notable differences. In low tone syllables, while word-initial stops are phonetically voiceless most of the time, fricatives are quite often phonetically voiced. While low tone obstruent onsets are followed by breathier vowels than high tone onsets, this pattern is not clear-cut for nasal onsets. Furthermore, our transversal data show that low tone breathiness is more systematically produced by elderly – especially male – speakers, rather than young speakers, suggesting an on-going change towards the loss of breathiness.

Two nitrogen-rich azo-bridged POP displaying high photocatalytic reduction activity for CO2 to CO without a sacrificial reagent or metal co-catalyst were prepared.

This study focuses on the ongoing disappearance of low tone breathiness in Shanghai Chinese. In the change from a voicing contrast to a tone register contrast in Sinitic languages, the ancient voiced series was characterised by a breathy voice quality, which remained as a secondary and redundant cue of low tones in Shanghai Chinese. This study, using transversal production data from 12 young and 10 elderly speakers, shows that low tone breathiness is better preserved by elderly than young speakers, and by male than female speakers. We predict a future loss of this secondary cue, which is speeding up due to the interference with Standard Chinese. We also found that the disappearance is more advanced in female speakers, which might be explained by female speakers' stronger adherence to Standard Chinese as the prestigious form. Indeed, our young female speakers reported more frequent usage of Standard Chinese than Shanghai Chinese and higher competence in Standard Chinese than in Shanghai Chinese, whereas young male speakers were more confident in their usage of Shanghai Chinese. Loss of low tone breathiness in Shanghai Chinese (1) *-V(N). > 平 ping 'level tone' *-ʔ. > 上 shang 'rising tone' *-s. > *-h. > 去 qu 'departing tone' There was another coda type, *-p|t|k., which is preserved in Middle Chinese and some Modern Chinese varieties such as Cantonese, and which forms another category that is traditionally counted as a fourth tonal category 入 ru 'entering tone'. The second tonal development, which occurred around 1000 CE, and which is known as the 'tone split' process, consisted in a transphonologisation from a two-way onset voicing contrast into a two-way tone register contrast, as shown in (2), where

stands for any voiceless stop onset and stands for any voiced stop onset. (2) *.P-> 陰 yin 'high register' *.B-> 陽 yang 'low register' It is very likely that the voicing contrast in early Middle Chinese was accompanied by a voice quality difference: voiced stop onsets were produced with breathy voice while voiceless ones were produced with modal voice. It was probably the combined effect of voicedness and breathy voice that led to perceptible pitch lowering before its phonologisation. Evidence of a voiced breathy series in Middle Chinese can be found in historical records of descriptions of consonants and tones of that time. Voiced stops are traditionally labelled as 濁 zhuo 'muddy', in contrast to voiceless ones that are labelled as 清 qing 'clear', which might convey an impression of different voice qualities. According to a description of Chinese tones from the early eighth century composed by Annen, a Japanese monk, "the level tone was level and low, with both the light and the heavy [allotones]" (cited in Mei 1970, 98) my emphasis). According to Pulleyblank (1978), 'heavy' and 'light' described originally different voice qualities associated to tones, as far as the level tone was concerned, at least. Furthermore, as suggested by Annen's descriptions, voice qualities, originally associated with onsets, were la...

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This study investigates the relation between consonant voicing and F0 in modern Tokyo Japanese, as produced by young female speakers. In a tone language, the F0 perturbation related to onset voicing has been reported to be inhibited, so that F0 can be maximally used in tonal contrasts. According to this explanation, the same pattern should be found in Tokyo Japanese, as F0 should be maximally used to signal its "pitch-accent". Contrary to this prediction, our data show that in Tokyo Japanese, for the initial mora, F0 is remarkably lower after voiced than voiceless stops, and this effect lasts till the final part of the mora. However, the F0 level of the mora endpoint is maintained at H or L so that the pitch-accent pattern is well preserved. We thus argue that the competing role of F0 in a pitch-accent language, or even a tone language does not necessarily impose limitations on the F0 perturbation effect. We also found that voiced stops are very often phonetically voiceless in utterance-initial position, while being phonetically voiced in utterance-medial position. Therefore, we question whether Tokyo Japanese is undergoing an incipient tonogenesis, given that the VOT cue is giving place to an F0 cue.

In Shanghai Chinese as well as many other Wu dialects, breathy voice is a well-documented accompaniment of the low-register tone syllables with obstruent as well as sonorant onsets. But Shanghai Chinese is rapidly changing and the breathy voice associated with low-register tones tends to disappear in young speakers’ productions. In this study, we asked whether breathy voice is nevertheless still perceived and whether it pushes tone identification toward low-register tones. We conducted forced-choice tone identification tests on young native listeners of Shanghai Chinese, using low–high register tone continua—from tone T3 (23) to tone T2 (34)—imposed on base syllables with either modal or breathy voice quality, and beginning with various onset consonants. We used continua constructed from either naturally produced or synthesized syllables. Our results show that breathy voice does bias tone identification responses toward the low-register tone T3. This result held for both synthesized and natural stimuli, except for the /m/-onset stimuli derived from naturally produced syllables. We propose that the phonetic change at issue—loss of breathiness in production—is not due to misperception but reflects the ever-stronger influence of Standard Mandarin Chinese. In other words, this particular case of sound change seems to be led by production rather than perception. It remains an open question whether this kind of sound change is only determined by sociolinguistic factors (here, the dominance of Mandarin Chinese) or is independently motivated by phonetic and/or phonological factors.

Consonant-intrinsic F0 (CF0) effects are mainly the result of raising F0 following voiceless obstruents, rather than of lowering F0 following voiced obstruents. However, there are also documented instances where lowered F0 following voiced obstruents is enhanced. Given that both voicing and F0 are affected by prosodic context, it is possible that CF0 is lowered in some contexts but not others. This possibility is investigated by examining CF0 in French and Italian in isolated citation forms. Results are comparable to carrier-phrase contexts, where no F0 lowering after voiced obstruents is observed. Possible sources of the apparent cross-linguistic differences are discussed.

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